Background

Concerns about the mental health and well-being of K-12 school teachers have never been more urgent, with stress levels, burnout, and rates of attrition reaching historically high levels. Mindfulness-based interventions may be a professional development option for teachers to better meet the demands of their career with skills such as mental flexibility, emotion regulation, resilience, empathy, compassion, and interpersonal skills.  

Aims 

Using a randomized waitlist controlled study of this curriculum, our hypotheses are as follows:

1. Teachers who complete the Mindfulness for Humans course will experience an increase in their overall well-being score from their baseline score, measured by the Survey of Flourishing (SURF), compared to teachers on the waitlist.
2. Teachers who complete the Mindfulness for Humans course will experience an increase in their mindfulness skills score from their baseline score, measured by the Mindfulness Questionnaire (MQ) and the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire-15 (FFMQ-15), compared to teachers on the waitlist.
3. Based on responses to qualitative open-ended questions, teachers who complete the Mindfulness for Humans course will find the curriculum to be engaging, valuable, and worth the time-investment required.

Method

Participants will be 200 K-12 teachers of regular classrooms from school districts in the Utah Valley area. The curriculum is an online, accessible, engaging, research-based introductory course developed to teach basic mindfulness skills through instructional videos and guided practices. The course consists of a 15-session training program completed over about 3 weeks in 25-min sessions. The curriculum includes instruction in basic mindfulness principles, including skills for reducing stress, managing challenging emotions, building resilience, and cultivating compassion for self and others.

Results

Subjective well-being & mindfulness skills results from data collection are forthcoming. Course feedback has been positive thus far.

Conclusion

This project could have important implications for promoting teacher well-being using a curriculum that is grounded in evidence-based practices, is easily accessible and scalable, relatively brief, and that requires little or no work on the part of the school system.